chapter
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Sanctus’s trench coat slipped on my left shoulder as I pushed the massive carved doors open to the Rubrum meeting chamber. It cracked with an ominous thud as the hinges protested. Ash piled up behind me. Clouds of grey and silver sifted the setting sun coming in from the high windows. I had used what…
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I dug around in the pile of storage boxes I had sequestered into the weird alcove corner a support beam in my room provided me. One box looked promising. I hadn’t gotten into it from five years ago. I shifted some papers and random shirts off the top and found the black fabric I was…
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A pasty cream-coloured world slowly came into focus, along with a raging headache. More like Medicus’s sick yellow cement walls. I studied the lines between brick and mortar in apathetic indifference for a time. I kept my breathing shallow. It felt better that way. I had to wonder. I had been in my great-grandmother’s apartment.…
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“This mean I need to find you another shole?” Saeesar slipped into a current that sent us away from the Gulf and Karis’s nesting ground.
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“You sure about this?” I tossed my pillow onto my bed with a thunk. It had fallen on the floor sometime in the night. My room was dark and crowded with Sanctus’s palette taking up most of the floor. I was in a rush to get dressed before we met with the rest of the…
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Peeking out of the cavern’s entrance, I had hopes of both seeing no one, and seeing someone, anyone who might be able to help me. From the dim lighting across the nesting ground, I assumed it was at least daytime hours, maybe noon. That gave me a limited time to find where the arena was…
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“What do you mean you will become Pluto?” Sanctus asked in confusion. I despised this aspect of being a co-leader. Mater was to be Proserpina. I was to be Pluto. It was the positions we held within Caeruleum. Hades and Persephone – the givers, the protectors. Pluto and Proserpina – the takers, the grievers. There…
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“Keep him hidden,” a low feminine voice woke me from my swaying slumber. I choked, having forgotten where I slept. “Oh good, he’s awake.”
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I yawned. The morning was way too early, and everything was stiff. I hadn’t moved in hours. I stretched, wary of Sanctus, only to find space around me. I blinked. My bed was empty. That was a first. His palette was empty. Not that I had woken to him in it in the morning yet…
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Six weeks passed with few outstanding events. Sanctus’s back healed from the stitches, leaving behind itchy scabs that drove him up the wall. He went daily to see Medicus after we dropped Sam and Abby off at Argenti’s together. Within a week and a half of our conversation about his embroidery, he joined with Vestitor…
Chapel Orahamm 